An Unusual Journey to a Seemingly Known World

Beata Zatońska

Abstract

Zatonska writes about Iwona Kolasinska’s book Woman and Demons. On the Audience of Film Horror. Kolasinska argues that an analysis of the greatest myths of horror leads towards a recognition of the traces of the subjectivity of woman, which defy the deterministic vision of femininity. It is a woman who opens the areas of meanings essential for the understanding of the motives of main heroes’ actions, and plays a key part in the plot. She becomes a link between the story unfolding on screen and viewers. According to Kolasinska, the man-cre­ated and controlled-image of woman contradicts her autonomy; while it is dominant in Western culture, it is questioned in horror films. The book concentrates on the horror-specific expression of the subjective aspect of femininity (in the way characters are portrayed, diegesis and in the projections of members of an audience) In Zatonska’s view the book by Kolasinska offers the possibility of re-considering opinions on genre cinema while a solid knowledge-supported meticulous analysis causes that we immerse ourselves with pleasure in the movie-created worlds and at the same time learn much about ourselves and the surrounding reality.